Croatian-born director-writer Goran Dukic instills Wristcutters with the absurdist humor you find in films from the Balkans.
Wristcutters: A Love Story (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:85
Fresh:55
Rotten:30
Average Rating:6.1/10
Consensus: Wristcutters: A Love Story sounds like a normal enough indie flick. Boy meets girl. Boy gets separated from girl. Boy goes on a road trip with friends to find girl and gains a new perspective on life. Except everybody's dead.
Theatrical Release:23-11-2007
Synopsis: If a film begins with a suicide, chances are, it won't be the feel-good movie of the year. But WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY is surprisingly sweet and funny even as it proudly features a dark streak... If a film begins with a suicide, chances are, it won't be the feel-good movie of the year. But WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY is surprisingly sweet and funny even as it proudly features a dark streak that lives up to its title. After a rough breakup, Zia (Patrick Fugit) decides to off himself by slashing open his wrists. Instead of waking up in heaven or hell, Zia arrives in a bland world that looks a lot like the one he just left, though with far less color, life, and--obviously--happiness. In this afterlife reserved for suicides, no one can smile, and the sky is a starless void. But when Zia hears that his ex-girlfriend (Leslie Bibb) has killed herself and lives in his world, he sets out on a road trip to find her. Joined by Russian musician Eugene (Shea Whigham) and pretty hitchhiker Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon), Zia crosses the desolate landscape and encounters a variety of strange characters. With the help of Mikal, Zia realizes that maybe his ex-girlfriend isn't really what he's looking for. Most films don't stray from prescribed genres or simple plots, but this dark comedy from director Goran Dukic is audacious in its originality. Dukic adapted Etgar Keret's short story "Kneller's Happy Campers" into a film that succeeds on every level. His cast, particularly Fugit and a brilliant Tom Waits in a supporting role, is worthy of the excellent material and blackly comic dialogue. Though it could be described as a romantic comedy, this film is far closer to ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND than SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE. WRISTCUTTERS's soundtrack is also something to sing about with several infectious tracks from Gogol Bordello and a pitch-perfect score from Bobby Johnston. [More]
Starring: Patrick Fugit, Shea Whigham, Shannyn Sossamon, Tom Waits
Starring: Patrick Fugit, Shea Whigham, Shannyn Sossamon, Tom Waits, Will Arnett, Leslie Bibb, John Hawkes, Abraham Benrubi, Mark Junior Boone, Jake Busey, Mikal P. Lazarev, Chase Ellison
Director: Goran Dukic
Director: Goran Dukic
Screenwriter: Goran Dukic
Producer: Adam Sherman, Tatiana Kelly, Mikal P. Lazarev, Chris Coen
Composer: Bobby Johnston
Studio: Lions Gate and AfterDark Films
Reviews for Wristcutters: A Love Story
Seven years after Almost Famous, Patrick Fugit still sports that winning, dorky haircut, bangs flopping over his eyes. He is impossible not to like.
It's described as a black comedy, but you can forget the comedy part.
A tribute to ultra-low budget explorations into the unknown and the politically incorrect. This is the stuff that art is made of.
Strands a fantastic premise and interesting characters on its increasingly annoying road trip to nowhere in particular.
Wristcutters: A Love Story has an offbeat, absurdist charm that turns a potentially creepy conceit into an odd, touching adventure.
The inscrutability of the performances make Bill Murray look like Anthony Quinn.
It's a surprisingly playful romantic drama, one less about death than about the quiet, necessary grind of living.
Wristcutters is simultaneously dark and sweet, always a difficult combination to pull off.
It's borderline parody of a kind of fey filmmaking popular at crunchy-granola festivals, but the counterfeit aesthetic is ultimately outshone by the life-affirming message.
Giving some thought to the desperation that leads to suicide would have prevented this vaguely conceived idea from being so DOA.
Goran Dukic's Shaggy yet assured Wristcutters manages to draw humor and warmth from [its] premise, while finding pathos in what could’ve been a vapid, high-concept lark.
The biggest letdown in Wristcutters is that it can’t compensate for its compact arrangement with the kind of absurdist aesthetics that its summary proposes.
To say that this low-fi indie movie is strange would be doing a disservice to quirky movies that thrive on their strangeness, rather than just being strange for the sake of spicing things up.
The story's dialogue may be wry, but what should have been a jumping-off point for a lively discussion about the meaning of life is really just a philosophically shallow wasteland.
Truly independent in mode and spirit, this offebat comedy deserves credit for its original vision of an after-life that's not all that different from this life--only slightly weirder and more darkly humorous.
You just can't go wrong with teenage suicide, road trips, and Tom Waits.
This existential tale about an afterworld exclusively for suicide victims and a handful of newcomers attempting to navigate the landscape pulsates originality through its uncanny way of incorporating the familiar into the offbeat.
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